A well-designed website: many things to many people

In my Advanced Web Design class at school, my professor asked us to post what we thought defined a well-designed website. I thought I'd share my answer here. I'm sure he wasn't expecting anything so involved as this :D

"What makes a well-designed website?" That's quite a question.

As a dabbler in web design, I would say a well-designed website is "good-looking". It should look somewhat elegant. The "Web 2.0 style" -- glossy buttons, spacious openness, minimalistic simplicity, and copious use of gradients -- comes to mind. I can't think of any sites that strictly adhere to all these points, but DynamicDrive is a good-looking site.

As an HCI-minded individual, a well-designed website is made by more than its layout. A well-designed website makes it obvious what the site's purpose is, what can be done on the site, how to go about doing it, etc. Again, simplicity is king, and clutter is sin. Content is easy to skim and understand. The layout does not make it difficult to navigate. If a feature breaks, the site will either gently tell the user so, and make it easy for the user to report the breakage; or the site will function in such a way that the user doesn't notice the difference, and the developer will be alerted. I think Digg is a fairly usable, well-designed site.

As a web developer at heart, a well-designed website is all in the code. Separation of structure, content, presentation, and functionality is something to be strived for. It should be built as follows:

1. First build a mock page (with the final site's design in mind) which contains either mock or real content, and only structure-oriented HTML markup. Presentational markup is sin :) This page is not design-oriented; its only purpose is to structure the page's content in a semantically meaningful way. Any tags that do not directly relate to the structure and/or content of the page should be struck down with a flaming sword of death. Organize things in such a ay that they flow logically along the page.
2. Develop the CSS in an externally linked file. Introduce any design-specific images through the CSS, if possible (and it should be possible). Strive for cross-browser compatibility within the CSS, making the site look as similar as possible from one browser to the next. If any additional markup is required for the design of the site, the CSS should be developed to make the site look good without it; if still necessary, the necessary markup can be added through the next step. Use what you have to get what you want.
3. Develop the functionality (using JavaScript) in another externally linked file. Nonintrusive javascript should be used, progressively enhancing the site after it has loaded. Nonintrusive javascript should also be used to add any necessary additional markup to be used by the CSS. Again, use what you have to get what you want.
4. If possible, convert the finished page layout into a template, and use a server-side language to fill it with dynamic content.
5. Finally, when all is said and done, pull up the page in a browser, and make sure everything works. Turn off javascript, refresh, and make sure everything works. Turn off css, refresh, and make sure everything works. Then browse the web for a while....and see if it works :)

According to these steps, a well-designed website will work across browsers, degrade gracefully in older browsers, respect the wishes of those with Javascript turned off. There are lots of websites that use this methodology (using only semantically-meaningful html, etc). One well-designed website in this case is Dynamix Labs. It doesn't seem that they use any javascript, and if you turn off CSS, the site is still very readable.

As a user, I want information, and I want simplicity in doing what I want to do. A lot of the time, I want information that I can talk about in my blog. I use google as my main go-to source for finding things. If I find a site that gives me good information on a regular basis, I want to be able to subscribe to its RSS feed, or something similar. If I find a site that I come back to on a regular basis (whether I be forced to, or do so of my own free will), I want to be able to customize my experience on that site. I want to be able to change the colors, the landing page content; anything and (usually) everything, I want to customize it to better serve my way of doing things.
One service that I use on a daily basis is Google Reader (you'll have to sign in to your google account), a web-based RSS aggregator. It features "folders" that you can use to organize your feeds, drag-and-drop re-ordering of feeds, and very easy-to-use methods of subscribing and unsubscribing from feeds. Another service that I use regularly is Netvouz, a social bookmarking site. I chose Netvouz over other bookmarking sites because of its folder organization feature. You can organize your bookmarks according to category (and sub-category) and make certain bookmarks private. It's also easy to delete or edit my existing bookmarks, and really easy to add new bookmarks using the Netvouz firefox extension.

I must say, though, that my most frequently used and favorite thing is FireFox. It is customizable in (almost) every way possible; its functionality is infinitely extendable through extensions, which anyone familiar with XML and Javascript can write. It has excellent support for standards; the upcoming FireFox 3 is said to have passed the Acid2 test, which is huge for web developers.

As you can see, from my point(s) of view, a well designed website can and should be many things to many different people.

So, what do you think? What makes a website "well-designed"? What are some examples of well-designed websites?

Note: References to certain things "being sin" should not be taken literally. Putting presentational markup on your page will not send you to hell. Nor will avoiding clutter send you to heaven. These are just my personal pet peeves :)